Yes, I do. How do you care for someone you’ve never met? Is being in proximity to a person’s physical body, at least once, that is, meeting them, an absolute prerequisite to knowing and caring about them? Not really. Maybe wise, maybe better, maybe more something or another, but not an absolute prerequisite, I don’t believe.

Sure I care. But what does that mean? It’s just words written on a screen. I can’t actually meet anyone. I can’t do anything for them, except offer my ideas. If ideas count, then yes, I care a lot. I care very, very much about a lot of people who live mostly in my imagination. I don’t mean to say I’m imagining others. I mean that what I know of them fills my imagination. And in every single answer I write, I try to put myself into the OP’s shoes. It is very important to me. I am grateful for every chance I have to connect with someone, even if only via pixels on a screen.

Sure. People are the same – and it doesn’t matter how you met them. What if one were blind? Deaf? It’s just a way to meet people: then it’s up to your personalty and empathy.

I disagree (again) with @wunday: I have had gifts and books sent to me, and I have sent things to friends here. PM’s can get intimate and thought-provoking. I have chatted to the point where I have revealed of myself more than I ever would in a conversation – add a live chat, photos and video chat/skype and you are practically there – in the person’s face/mind/bed.

Then, should you choose to visit me and check out the hot springs – we could become friends in real life too. Happens all the time.

Good question….I care about a few jellies even though we have never met. How could you not care about people who are genuine souls? ;)

Communication, emphathy and imagination. I have a collection of post cards from the mid-1800s (hundreds) that belonged to my grandfather’s sister. People use to trade post cards and communicate across the US in post card exchange clubs without having ever met. She struck up a romance with a man she met doing this. The post cards are really insightful, romantic and full of love and getting to know somebody without being overtly sexual. She ended up marrying this man, sight unseen and moved to Hutchinson, Kansas. I think it is the early version of an Internet romance.

She had many friends and wonderful conversations writing, much like the Internet.

How could you care for someone whom you’ve never met?

They sent me an expensive bottle of booze and called me from a rubber dick show.

Oh, definitely. My first love and I met as pen pals (in the stone age, before the internet), and we fell in love before we met in person. We became a real life couple, moved in together…it lasted for 5 years :)

Sometimes you can form incredibly strong bonds with other people based solely on the written/spoken word. When that happens, just imagine how much more amazing things get when you do finally meet in person :)

There’s also a wonderful book called 84 Charing Cross Road about a 28 year friendship between writer in New York, Helene Hanff, and Frank Doel, the chief buyer of Marks & Co, an “antiquarian” bookstore in London. The two of them never did meet. She Hanff, the New York writer meant to visit, put off visiting, and there was that pesky matter of WWII that put thing off, then she kept meaning to visit London and never did. Frank Doel died before she ever met him. And it was a purely platonic friendship, she grew to care about his wife and his family too, that existed only in and because of their correspondence. It’s really a sweet, lovely story, a short, wisp of a book, really. It was made in to a play and into a film with Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins and it’s a sweet, lovely movie too. You might enjoy the book, the film or both hopefully. It’s the story of an amazing friendship between two people who simply never get around to meeting each other.

I’m surprised, @seazen. You seem very guarded to me. I had assumed you were that way with everyone. Wow! How wrong I am!

absolutely, we talk more than the people I know in real life

Yep. A lot.

Interesting how mostly dudes answered this.

@Jude half the time here, I never know if someone is a male or a female unless they say. I’m female and fabulous.

Very easily. It’s in my nature.

Absolutely! I dunno if I’ve affected anyone else, but there are a handful of jellies out there who I care a lot about.

Fabulous.

Of course. Whether or not you see them, you’re still communicating and building a relationship. I’m lucky enough to have met some of the friends I made online (PnL, shrubbery, bluemukaki, kenmcq, J0E, and lefteh) and after I spent some time with them I wondered why it took me so long to see them in the first place.
It’s the communication that builds the bond. Talking, telling each other about your life, sharing problems, joking and laughing, discovering similar interests and differences, so on and so on. That’s what makes a friend, not whether you see them or not. Honestly, the jellies, both ones I’ve met and ones I haven’t met (yet), are some of my best friends ever. Anywhere.
And that is my two cents.

I care for a few. I don’t know why I care about them, but I’d be hurt if something happened to them. I mean I’ve felt anger, jealousy, sadness, and all types of emotions because of online people. It’s strange. I guess it’s because you get to see the real them. I don’t know, lol.

Extra lurve for @lillycoyote for knowing about 84, Charing Cross Road. (I actually played Frank Doel in a regional theater production of that play.) There are some that I care about and there are some that I would like to get to know more.

How? Easy. It’s all about communication. You build a rapport, and you build a relationship.

Of course. I care for people I don’t even know.

yes

”How could you care for someone whom you’ve never met?”
I see this as a very loaded question.
I don’t understand why face-to-face encounters are a necessity in “meeting” somebody. I don’t see the importance in that physical meet. I’m able to connect with people better if I don’t have to worry about being in the same room. I’m awkward as fuck, and it’s a lot less bad if I have the buffer-zone of the internet.
The three people who’re closer to me by far than anyone else even family are people who I’ve never met in-person, who I exclusively know online, and people who live on the opposite side of the U.S. We’re perfectly able to spill our guts and share our joys through text, skype, or phone.

So, yes. I care for other jellies, people whom I’ve never physically seen. I get upset when I hear they’re having problems, I don’t sleep well when they’re stressed out, I’ve worried about their survival, I’m elated to hear when they have a good day. And I want to hug them so tightly.

@hawaii_jake I absolutely love the book and absolutely love the movie, one of my all time favorites, and it’s rare that I love both. I’m not even sure which I love more, the book or the movie. Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins are so good in the film. When I went to London, many years ago, I made a pilgrimage to 84 Charing Cross Road, had to. It was on my must do in London list from the moment I knew I was going there. The bookstore was no longer there, of course, I knew that. But how could I not go? It made me feel connected to two of my closest “book friends.” What made it, oddly, even more special, was to stand there, at 84 Charing Cross Road, imagining these people I’d never met, who had never even met each other and just feeling connected to their connection. I know that sounds crazy but it was important to me and that’s the way it felt.

It must have been wonderful to play that role. Anthony Hopkins was pretty good, but he’s not a god or anything. :-)

@lillycoyote : There’s a plaque there now commemorating the bookstore. I was in London before I ever knew of it, or I, too, would have made a pilgrimage there. I did walk down Charing Cross Road once, so I must have passed the spot.

@hawaii_jake I shouldn’t be so damn “religious” about this, it’s only a book, it’s only a street, but if you walked on Charing Cross Road, then you walked at least some of the path, in some of the “footsteps” that Frank Doel, the man and Frank Doel, the character you played, walked, and that must be pretty cool for an actor, I would think.

@lillycoyote : Yes, it’s very cool. I really enjoyed playing Doel. He was so unassuming.

I definitely care for them. I know it’s only online and I know we may not be getting the “full” them or we may be getting an altered them (there’s really no way to be entirely sure) and people like to claim that online communication is so inferior to face-to-face communication and it may not be as rich, but it’s still a person behind that text and I do feel that I care for people online, even if I’ve never met them or seen them live.

@ducky_dnl

I’ve felt anger, jealousy, sadness, and all types of emotions because of online people.

Same with me.

Not really.

I absolutely do. Before Fluther, I never believed it was really possible to be friends with people I didn’t know in ‘real life’. I’m so grateful to have been proven wrong. So, so grateful.

I even wrote about it.

I would say so. I mean, I’ve been using fluther for 3 years now, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you guys are great listeners and give solid advice to boot. I’ve come to trust the fluther standard (thanks to the great team of mods :D), and I do my best to maintain that standard in my own posts. So if someone here is having a problem, even if I’ve never met them and have no other way of contacting them, I’ll still share any solace I can think to give. Not that most problems aren’t way out of my depth, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

I have some very close online friends, that I care very deeply about. I don’t need to be able to see or touch someone’s physical body in order to be friends with them. I’ve yet to develop such a relationship with anyone on Fluther but I’ve been online a long time and I’ve made close friendships elsewhere.

Fluther is my first foray into an online community and I was so sure in the beginning that I could maintain an emotional detachment from the virtual personalities here. Silly me. Now I care deeply for a lot of Jellies, and I’m frustrated that distance and circumstance make it unlikely that I will ever meet some of the ones I’ve gotten close to. I look forward with giddy delight to actually meeting some others.

@Sarcasm It’s easy to say you care for someone. It’s easy to lend them an ear, or be there for them when they are upset. That takes almost no work at all.

For me, the proof is in the pudding. I believe that you know someone really cares for you when they go out of their way to help you. When they visit you in the hospital or help you fix your roof. When they lend you their car. When they go to your father’s funeral. When they make food for you and vacation with you. That’s caring, in my book.

You can’t do that online. You don’t have to go out of your way to care for someone online. You can only listen or read. You can only reply to them. You may have all the empathy in the world, and that’s a good thing, but it’s not even close to the caring you can do in the real world. So I do all these things. I spend a lot of time doing online caring. But it’s virtual caring, which is very different from real caring.

For me, it’s easy to say I care for someone online, but it’s hard to prove it. Proving that I care has to be done in person. I have only met three people in the real world that I met on a Q&A site. I physically met with each one only once. It doesn’t put me in a very good light, but for two of them, I never talked to them again after I met them. That was a fail.

Only one has kept contact with me. We talk every week. We would both love to actually see each other more often, but it isn’t possible for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that there are 1000 miles between us. We care very much for each other, but there is nothing we can do for each other except talk. Talk is cheap. I’m the kind of guy who believes that it doesn’t really mean anything if you merely talk the talk. I figure I gotta walk the walk if I’m going to prove I care for someone.

As you know, I do a lot of talking. I do virtually no walking with any jellies. There are many jellies I would walk with if I could. But I can’t or won’t which means that no matter how much good advice I might give, it doesn’t count for nearly as much as making a real pie for a real @JilltheTooth would count. One real pie is worth more than everything else I have done here, as far as I’m concerned. Ok, maybe not just one pie, but definitely a Christmas dinner! :-)

I care about people in general and care a bit more about some of the people I’ve come to know through Fluther. Sure, I’m limited in what I can do for some of them based on my location compared to theirs, but I had that same limitation with mu husband when he was deployed. Physical distance alone does not stop me from caring for people.

I had someone from Fluther send me a beautiful painting that will be used for my baby’s nursery when I get it set up. I’ve had people from Fluther check in on me to see how I was doing while my husband was deployed. Sure, it may have just been words on a screen to some people, but to me, it was the thought and compassion they had for me that made me feel cared about and I hope I do the same for the people that I care about.

If the people I cared about needed something, I’d do what I could to help them out. Perhaps I can’t loan them my car because I don’t live near them, but I’d try to find other ways to help them out if I could and I would be there for them as best I could, even if that just meant offering them an ear to listen to them and some thoughtful words to try to help them through whatever it is they are going through.

I think @wundayatta is underestimating the power of verbal support here. While I would, indeed, appreciate a real pie, it meant a lot to me, Wundy, when we exchanged some personal stories in PMs awhile ago, it reinforced my feelings that I didn’t go to extremes to achieve something I wanted, as periodically others would have me believe. And, as @Seaofclouds says sometimes a sympathetic ear (so to speak) is invaluable.

Maybe it’s just me, @JilltheTooth, but when I really need help, I’d take a real hug over a whole slew of comments expressing care. Someone holding me feels like I’m being cared for. Thousands of words are wonderful, but they aren’t at all the same.

Am I the only one who feels such a difference between virtual life and real life? Between virtual relationships and real relationships? Maybe that’s my problem.

@wundayatta I get what you mean and agree. To me, you can’t compare real life with the virtual world. Two totally, separate things. I think it is dangerous to confuse the two. I think you can have conversations and have empathy for “people” on the Internet in discussion, but it isn’t the real world.

I’ve met a few people in RL that I first got to know on-line. A couple of them have become my best friends.

The way I think of it we are just a shell without our minds. On-line you get people’s thoughts and ideas and prejudices probably more so than you would if you had met them in real life. It is this intimate sharing that causes me to feel close to people on-line.

I’ve had some of the best support from people on-line. For that I am thankful and grateful.

I care about many people on-line.

@wundayatta I don’t know… just because you might be unable to physically manifest your care, doesn’t mean it isn’t real. I’ve cried with and over many an online friend, and held many metaphorical hands through tough times. I definitely care.

godammit, she does ^^

@augustlan I’m sure you’re right. It’s just me. People tell me that when I listen to them or engage with them it feels like I care for them, and I also feel like I care for them. But it doesn’t feel like real caring. Maybe it’s because I could walk away from computer—and never know what happens here again. And no one would know what happened to me. I wouldn’t do that—well, unless I died—but I could do it. Theoretically speaking. Emotionally, I don’t think I could.

But it’s that I can’t actually do anything other than talk. It just doesn’t feel like I’m doing anything if I’m only talking. I had this same conversation with my wife this morning. She thanked me for listening to her and supporting her and she said that it helped, and I was thinking, ‘But I didn’t do anything, and anyway, you’re my wife. Of course I’m going to listen to you.’

Cooking dinner is supporting her. Shopping and taking care of the car and going to work and picking up the kids and planning vacations and birthday parties—that’s support. Listening? Letting her vent? I don’t even have to actually pay attention to do that. I do pay attention, but I’m just sitting there, listening, most of the time. I speak very little. She could be talking to a log. Maybe I go “mmmm” every once in a while. How? I ask you. How is that caring?

It’s just not in the same ballpark as, say, taking in a game with our son. Or buying her a box of chocolates. Or making music so she can dance.

@wundayatta : I do appreciate your point; recently when an online friend lost a loved one I felt frustrated that I couldn’t be hands on with the comfort or the help. However, when my Dad passed away a few years ago, it really did lighten my load to get letters from people that couldn’t be present. To know that they cared about me enough to take the time to tell me made me feel feel better, physically and emotionally, and made the “after” work easier to do. Both are important.

I didn’t read all the responses, so I’m sure someone already said this.

I’ve found that you can get to know someone better by communication in ways other than face-to-face. For some reason it’s easier to be more honest, and to let your guard down when you’re typing instead of talking. Relationships I have with people online tend to be stronger because in a short time you can find out more about them than someone I’ve known in real life for years.